Question

here is code that I have:

agent = Mechanize.new
page = agent.get 'http://google.com'
page.save 'google_index.htm'

How can I restore that google_index.htm to Mechanize::Page object and continue working with that page, eg. submit, parse, etc?

I’ve tried to do YAML::dump() or Marshal::dump(), but it seems to be impossible:

irb(main):024:0> page.class
=> Mechanize::Page

then:

irb(main):013:0> YAML::dump(page) 
TypeError: can't dump anonymous class Class 

and:

irb(main):023:0> Marshal::dump(page)
TypeError: no marshal_dump is defined for class Nokogiri::XML::Element

Answer 1

Maybe you could just restore the cookies:

agent.cookie_jar.save_as('cookies')
agent.cookie_jar.load('cookies')

There’s a good chance that your session will be expired though.